June 2007 : I've visited over 150 blogs tonight with many more to go. Awesome! I want to comment on everyone's before I move on to the next post. Still collecting globes and adding them to the gallery. It is past midnight and there are 300 linkies here. Amazing...!! Right now, I need to get some rest. See you tomorrow. Keep sending them in. It will still be Dona Nobis Pacem day tomorrow....won't it? Of course! Thank you for such an incredible day in the blogosphere. Really inspiring. Stay tuned. I just found a peace globe from a mmmm..mmm...mouse. (I smell a story.)

Pre-script: Please remember to leave a comment at the end of this post along with your url in the box provided so that I may continue to document this event.If you'd like to have the linky code for this event, just email and I will send it to you.

This is Mimi Pencil Skirt reporting live from the lovely land of the Peace Globes. This post was written just before midnight on the eve of the first Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere - quite unexpectedly inspired by a bowl of marbles - and a loving, gentle tap on the shoulder by someone I loved and lost. I am still amazed at how the story of the Peace Globes really began. Many of you are posting a globe for the first time today and do not know this story. For you, I shall tell it again. And for those who began this journey with me last year, thank you from the bottom of my pencil-skirted heart for allowing me to introduce you, once again, to this honorable man. I am proud to know you.

So is he.

The Silence of PeacePapa's Marbles

They've been sitting on my piano for more years than I care to count - on the corner of the Kohler and Campbell my grandfather gave me when I was fourteen years old. After he died, I found them in a tattered and dirty bag at the bottom of a box full of his personal things. He wanted me to have them. His marbles.

Handmade roughhewn marbles crafted from rock by my grandfather and his brothers. The year was 1920 and there was no money for toys.
I often wondered why he didn't leave them for a male member of the family. Honestly, folks. It wasn't until just tonight - the eve of Dona Nobis Pacem in the Blogosphere - that I discovered the answer.

I know stranger things have happened.

I just can't recall when.

I knew this post would not be written until the last moment. I made lots of notes but I just couldn't quite make it happen. It is still a little while before midnight in my part of the United States and I'm supposed to be spinning out a masterpiece of goodwill and peace prose - maybe a stunning poem like those we've already seen. A song, a lyric, a new tune.

Instead, Mimi Pencil Skirt wants to talk about rocks.

So I went into my study and began to polish them. One by one. The bowl, the piano, the granite. How many times have I sat at that very bench and casually glanced into that bowl? Thousands. Song after song.

Tune after tune. Lesson after lesson. Tear after tear.

He didn't have a lot of money it seems to me now, my grandfather. At the time though, he was the richest man I knew. And he has been on my mind this week more often than not. Well over six-feet tall and always impeccably dressed, my Papa was the most humble man I've ever met.
When he passed away I met scores of people who told me what he'd meant to them. "He helped me when I needed money....." "He gave me his shoes...." and on and on.

His kindness was not news to me. The fact that a large portion of the town showed up at his wake was, however, a stunning surprise. I didn't know I'd been sharing him all those years.

He made me feel as if I were the only one in the world.

Strange, those marbles. All different shapes and sizes. Colors, too. Yet they've co-existed for years right there atop the long- lovingly- played strings inside my piano - the one Papa used his savings account to buy for me - while he worked two jobs at the factory and made time up on Saturdays when he missed work hours to drive me to my lessons.

I was a bit different. Artistic. Content with solitude. Always writing in endless journals and playing broody piano music. Papa didn't pamper me - even though that's a disputed fact to this day in my family.

What he did was more earth-shattering.

The one on top. That one.Different... that one. I know that's the very one he made.
I'm sure of it.

When I think about peace and what it means to me, I always wander back to a time when I first felt it. Because I know on an unconscious level that world peace cannot - will not - be achieved without inner peace. Adversaries on both sides of the conflict have to have it. You can't weave magical tranquility out of thin air and conferences. Peace is a state of being.

It has a life of its own.

Real lasting peace is born of creative jumble and hard work. Victories are never won by the one who has the most power - wars are won; but not a state of peace. Nothing good can ever come of power at play for the sake of power.

It never lasts and there's always a price.

Papa's Marbles. Not a pretty one in the bunch.
Every one brown or taupe. Almost every one.

I started thinking this week about those times in my life
when I first felt real peace.
For me, it came in the presence of God at an early age. Not because I am privileged or special. But simply because I was loved. Unconditionally.

Sometimes it takes just one person
to unlock magic in someone else.

I watched that kind of magic flow through my grandfather's life.
He was in tune with who he was. He knew the simple meaning of love.

He knew how to pray.

I often wondered how other people sensed that about him - without the benefit of those life-giving hugs he saved just for me.

He chose the color himself. Papa.....he must have spent hours honing that rock.

I often went with him to backwoods church services. Informal revivals, formal services, anywhere there was special music and a spirit of God - he was there. I can't explain it really. We would visit churches and the minister would ask him to lead the invocation or say the benediction - even though they'd never met. How did they know he could pray?I knew he could pray......but how didthey know?

Taking his hat off and bowing his head, he would very quietly hold audience with his Maker. It didn't matter how many people were listening. His prayers always began the same way......"Dear Gracious Heavenly Father......"
No matter where. Or with whom. Or in front of whom.

Hat in hand. Head bowed. He knew how to reach God.
And people sensed that when they met him.

If peace can be worn like a garment then he was always finely clothed, my Papa.

One night he took me by the hand and led me to the altar with him. He knelt down on one knee, elbow resting on the other and silently voiced his heart. I was right there! I heard the whole thing and he never said a word.

He made them with his own hands. He molded them into shape.
Created them and lovingly took care of them. He chose the color.
Not a sonata or a novel. Certainly nothing brilliant or fancy.
Just ordinary marbles.

Tonight I'm sitting at my table writing stories on an electronic device that sends messages to a guy in Canada about globe graphics and insomnia, making pots of endless coffee to stay awake, answering emails from Germany, London, China, New York , Oman and beyond.

Could Papa have ever imagined such a thing?

Did he?

What was he praying about all that time anyway?Papa's marbles.....There's something odd about them.

Oh forget about it. They're just a bunch of rocks. You've got a story to write. Can't you think of something brilliant? It's past midnight and everyone has their peace globe up but you.

I struggled. There's something missing here, I thought.
It's about Papa. I can't stop thinking about him.What would he say to me tonight? How wouldhe pray?

The marbles.
Look closer.

When it hit me, I was way past the point of arguing with myself about miracles and such. I've seen too many come through my mailbox today to argue with God about that.

Do you see it?The blue one on top.

It looks like a globe.

Dona Nobis Pacem did not start with Mimi. It started in 1920 when a little boy in the rural southeastern United States decided to shape a small blue marble - for his granddaughter.

148 comments:

The earth-like nature of the marble struck me immediately, reminding me of the show Big Blue Marble. Beautiful post about your grandfather - you might well really like the children's book by Doug Wood, Grandad's Prayers of the Earth. My globe is up now - thanks for organizing this!

I'm so sorry - blogger has put me on the linky 3 times! But in the spirit of peace day I know you'll not be mad with me... esp as I PROMISE I only hit 'enter' once. Ok so I was impatient and I did hit 'refresh' a couple of times while the computer was chugging slowly along....

Well I am at work and definately not supposed to be posting on my blog, but I just couldn't wait. Mine is up and flying proudly. (Took me awhile though cause our internet link just went down at the office :-( )

I’d like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmonyI’d like to hold in in my arms and keep it companyI’d like to see the world for onceAll standing hand in handAnd hear them echo through the hillsAh, peace throughout the land.

Thanks so much for doing this!! What a wonderful idea and I'm so proud to participate. Everyone's globes are so unique and beuatiful, too. They really sum everything up.

Thank-you for letting me read this most wonderful tribute and peace post. Thank-you for this chance to be apart of something close to my heart, and giving me the opportunity to learn about your lovely Grandad

Thank you for letting a newbie like me in on the origin of the peace globe movement. You were and are very lucky to have had such a warm soul as a grandfather. I am sure he is looking down upon you with a big proud smile on his face.

I am so thrilled and happy to see so many Peace Globes around the Blogosphere today. If nothing else is accomplished by this then at least we know that hundreds, if not more, were thinking of the same thing today and sending those good thoughts and vibrations out into the Universe.

And I fully believe that what you put out there is what you get back.

Thank you again for all that you do and for the inspiration that you have given to all of us!

Purrs for Peace, Mimi! Hey, if you still need a globe in Idaho, the Piney Woods Girls gotcha covered (in fur). They were the Calico Girls, but then a tabby found them, so... Name Change!http://thecalicogirls.blogspot.com/BIG purrs from alla us to alla yous. If Bonnie an I can be peaceful fur a day, anyone can!

Thanks for the initiatives!There might be different reasons, intentions and perspectives in doing this and I respect them all. I do it may way as I believe i sharing culture, traditions and habits is a way to brake down misunderstanding and barriers. So I say: Make Blogs Not Wars!

Bond - You were one of the first to fly the Peace Globe banner this year in a big way. It was huge at the top of your blog! Meant a lot to me and I thank you now for all your encouragement and friendship.

Mimi,Thank you for your real tribute to your grandfather. Like you, I have an enormous affection for my grandpa, who passed away in 1981. I was named for him, my given name is Ralph III...this of itself is quite an honor. My grandpa was from West Virginia, with only an 8'th grade education, had as much innate intelligence as anyone I have met in my life (and I'm 52 now), just a sensible, hard working, great man. I wrote on my site earlier about Ralph (I), and he was the man in Steubenville, Ohio. I really enjoyed meeting your Papa, as he sounded very much like mine. Thanks for a wonderful day and your site!